11:53 PM,
Sep. 29, 2012

Tina Duer, winning with Chinese Cuisine at The Meadowlands.

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Leigh Nichol is a champion equestrian who has ridden horses all her life, and her family is in harness racing. But she had never faced anything like she did the first time she rode a trotter in a race instead of driving it from behind it in a sulky.

As with regular harness racing, trotters racing with riders on their backs start behind a mobile starting gate.

"The first strides off the gate were one of the scariest things I've done on a horse," Nichol told Harness Racing Communication executive director Ellen Harvey. "I wanted to automatically ask them to stop. I had to learn, because I ride hunters so ...